April, 2008

March, 2008

October, 2007

As I listened to 'Start The Week' on BBC Radio 4 this morning, the epithet I uttered was enough to alarm Kelly. She jumped up barking and ran out of the kitchen door, chasing off the bad guys! She knew something was amiss.

I was listening to Andrew Marr question Philip Bobbit a White House adviser, apologist for torture and advocate of the pre-emptive use of American power. Bobbit has proposed that we should stockpile laws in anticipation of terrorist emergencies. Another guest (Alexandra Fuller) commented “... nobody could have anticipated that terrorists would fly planes into the World Trade Centre (WTC)”.

Do you laugh or cry? Where to start? Perhaps with the facts. Since 1996 there had been many general warnings about terrorists flying planes into the White House, the CIA headquarters at Langley and the WTC. As late as the summer of 2001 (just before 9/11) an FBI officer reported specifically about planes being flown into the WTC.

The WTC was considered to be a target by the US Administration. In 1999 NORAD (North American Air Defence) began conducting exercises, at least twice a year, which simulated hi-jacked airliners being flown into the WTC (and Langley). This was reported in mainstream media, for example see here. Incredibly, NORAD was conducting an exercise simulating multiple aircraft hi-jackings on the very morning of 9/11, (code named Operation Vigilant Guardian) See here and here.

Did you too think that nobody could have anticipated terrorists flying planes into the WTC? If so, where did you get that idea from? Did somebody give it to you? Who? Whose idea is it? Do you want to keep that idea as a belief, make it part of you? Defend it? Why? Do you believe my version? Are you prepared to check it out?

If you start looking what else might you find? For example, why is Osama Bin Laden not wanted by the FBI in connection with 9/11? The FBI say that there is no hard evidence connecting him to 9/11. What?!! But Afghanistan was invaded because it was harbouring Osama Bin Laden. (Remember they were told to hand him over – or else, see here and here)

What else? We know that the 19 terrorists used knives and box-cutters to take control of the planes. How do we know that? – they all died and the planes vapourised. On the morning of 9/11 George Bush's Solicitor General, Ted Olsen, reported that his wife had called him twice from AA77 (the Pentagon plane) on her cell-phone (there were no seat phones on that plane). The problem is that in 2006 the FBI reported that no phone calls were made from that flight. The Pentagon also denied the Olsen story. Did you know that?

There is more, much more.

If knowledge has a value, false knowledge has a cost. In this case the death of up to a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the loss of human rights in the West. Meanwhile we sigh and quietly, reluctantly nod our heads in understanding of the need for torture in 'defence' of our noble ideals of liberty and democracy.